Democrat operatives stalk Republican candidates at home

Politicoreports on a creepy new tactic practiced by Democrat campaign operatives: following Republican candidates home and filming video of their houses, which is then uploaded to the Internet, with the blessing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Both parties employ “trackers” to follow candidates around, in the hopes of catching them in some embarrassing act. As Politico notes, one of the most famous examples of a tracker hitting paydirt came when Democrat Rep. Bob Etheridge freaked out on camera, and began screaming at Republican interns who had been following him around.

But this Democrat home-stalking is new, pervasive, and extremely disturbing. Obviously, it raises security concerns for the targeted candidates, who find their home addresses, including video of their front doors and mailboxes, splashed all over the Internet. It also intimidates the candidates, eliminating the last vestiges of their privacy.

The ostensible reason Democrats are shooting these creepy stalker videos is because they want to fuel their class-warfare campaign with images of the nice houses Republican candidates and their families live in. Democrat Party operatives are hoping that allied Super PACs will pick up the videos and use them in waves of TV commercials designed to portray the Republican candidates as greedy plutocrats.

You might be wondering if anyone is actually stupid enough to think Democrat candidates live in ramshackle homes. The answer, sadly, is yes. Seven of the top 10 richest members of Congress in 2011 were Democrats, but they continue to posture as modest defenders of the poor, while painting Republicans as sinister manor-dwelling aristocrats. They push this narrative hard enough to have some success with low-information voters.

Also, it should be noted that socialist ideology always makes copious allowances for staggering wealth among high Party officials and their valued allies. The most fervent class-war Democrats know perfectly well that President Obama spends a great deal of his time golfing and partying with filthy-rich crony capitalists and Hollywood celebrities. They know House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (net worth $35 million) lives in a very nice house, and has a history of demanding incredibly expensive perks for her high office. They understand that most candidates from either party tend to be people of means, certainly when considered through the lens of official Democrat ideology, which holds that anyone making over $200,000 per year is a “rich millionaire.” They just don’t care about any of this, because the exercise of political power in service to liberal ideology simply erases all considerations of greed, selfishness, and material excess. The wise, noble, politically correct masters of the benevolent State are supposed to live in mansions.

For the record, Democrats defend their stalker tactics, with DCCC spokesman Jesse Ferguson telling Politico, “House Republicans have spent this entire Congress trying to hide that they’re protecting benefits for millionaires and perks for themselves instead of protecting the middle class, but we won’t let them keep it secret any longer.”

Republican spokesman Paul Lindsay, on the other hand, vowed that “our trackers serve as eyes and ears to hold Democrats accountable in public events and public spaces only. Anything beyond that would be a violation of our policy.”

There probably isn’t much the Republicans can do about these tactics except call attention to them, as long as the Democrat stalkers respect private property boundaries. It’s a sad milestone in our increasingly bitter politics, as the divisive Democrats stoke class-war flames by campaigning on the notion that the front elevation of an opponent’s house is more important than his policies, while very pointedly refusing to discuss what sort of houses Democrat candidates own.